Research and Creative Responses from the Port Stories Community Group.

Participating Artists

From November 2016 to March 2017, a group of 9 Community Artists worked alongside The Dukes to explore and respond to C18th Lancaster, the Port and its rich heritage. Lino-Cut Portraits by Rebecca Willmott.

This fictional story of an onboard slave rebellion is based around the known history of the Lancaster Captain Samuel Sandys and the Lancaster slave ship “The Mary” in 1761. After what appears to have been a very troubled voyage, and having survived one attempted uprising, Sandys and most of his crew ended up being killed in a slave insurrection off the coast of The Gambia. This fictional story is told from the perspective of one of the few survivors of the voyage, on his return to Lancaster many months later.

Due to my half Caribbean background, and having lived in Ghana in West Africa for three years, during which, I visited a couple of the slave forts along its coastline, I had a personal interest in finding out more about Lancaster's involvement in slavery during the 18th century.

The Port Stories project has been a wonderful experience. I have learned an immense amount about the rich and varied history of Lancaster and got to meet with some wonderful people as part of the process.

I saw the invitation to become involved with Port Stories on the Regional Heritage e-newsletter and it suggested that participants would be creatively exploring the history of Lancaster. As a volunteer at Lancashire Archives and a member of the U3A it seemed like an attractive proposition.

Gillows of Lancaster, later known as Waring and Gillows, were furniture manufacturers. The firm started in the early 1700’s and finally closed in 1962 and for over 250 years they created furniture of outstanding quality, examples of which are still around today.